Chefchaouen or Marbella?

These two are not close here. Chefchaouen is a mountain town with no shore, and the nearest swim is the grey-sand beach at Oued Laou, a winding drive away by grand taxi or hire car. The cold river pools at Akchour are more a splash than a swim.

In Marbella the beach is the point of the trip. Its sandy shore runs from La Venus and El Fuerte in town to the dunes at Cabopino, with loungers, beach clubs and sardines grilling on the sand, and you can still swim well into autumn.

Chefchaouen's restaurants repeat one menu of tagine, couscous and kefta. The rewards are small and local: Rif goat cheese wrapped in palm leaf, bissara for breakfast and bread from the communal ovens. It is enough for a few days, and alcohol is hard to find.

Marbella offers far more range. It has tapas bars in the Casco Antiguo, fried fish on the beach, and acclaimed tasting menus along the Golden Mile. The catch is the overpriced seafront middle, so the best meals are a few streets inland.

Chefchaouen comes out ahead, mainly because the whole town is the attraction. Its blue medina was founded in 1471 and settled by Andalusian refugees. The red-walled kasbah stands on Outa el-Hammam, and the walk up to the Spanish Mosque at sunset makes a coherent picture, even if a day or two covers it.

Marbella's heritage is a pleasant afternoon. You get the Plaza de los Naranjos, the print museum, the Dalí bronzes on the Avenida del Mar and a Roman villa at Río Verde, and little else. For Andalusia's great monuments you need to drive on.

This is the widest gap between them. In Chefchaouen the evening is dinner, tea and a stroll before the medina falls silent, with only a couple of hotel bars serving alcohol.

Marbella in summer runs late on the Spanish clock. There are champagne bars and clubs at Puerto Banús, DJ beach clubs along the Golden Mile and calmer terraces in the old town. The scene shrinks sharply from November to March.

Both towns sit under mountains, and both are good for walkers. Chefchaouen's landscape is wilder and less organised. Trails climb straight from the Ras el-Maa spring, and Talassemtane National Park offers the gorge to God's Bridge, cedar forests with Barbary macaques and multi-day treks between villages. Trails are poorly marked, so a guide often helps.

Marbella pairs the climb up La Concha and the fir forests of Sierra de las Nieves with the sea. You can paddleboard, sail, take a dolphin-watching boat or walk the coastal path, and El Torcal and the Caminito del Rey are within reach. The shoreline itself is heavily built up.

From Chefchaouen there is really one good trip: Tetouan's larger, quieter UNESCO medina, with Martil beyond it on the coast. Tangier and Fes are better treated as the next stop on a route than as a return trip.

Marbella has a far richer spread. Ronda's gorge, Málaga's Alcazaba and Picasso Museum, Gibraltar and the white villages of Casares and Mijas are all easy outings, and Granada is a long but doable day. A car makes all of it simpler.

Chefchaouen is calm and friendly to children, but nothing in it is built for them. The steep, stepped lanes defeat pushchairs, and adults get offered hashish in the medina. It suits a short stop with older children who can walk.

Marbella is set up for families. It has sheltered, lifeguarded beaches, a flat promenade for scooters and resorts built around pools. An animal park, a zoo, water parks and a cable car are all along the coast, though Puerto Banús at night is not for children.

Chefchaouen is easier to manage because it is small. You can cross the medina on foot in a quarter of an hour, and petit taxis and shared grand taxis cover the rest. The cost is stairs and polished steps on almost every walk, and arrival is by long bus or road journeys with no railway.

Marbella stretches thinly along the motorway from San Pedro to Cabopino. The old town and promenade are walkable, but buses are slow and there is no train, so most visitors end up hiring a car or relying on taxis.

Marbella has more to buy, but most of it is luxury. You will find designer boutiques and a department store at Puerto Banús, small linen, leather and ceramics shops in the old town and weekly markets. Once you set aside the big labels there is little to browse.

Chefchaouen is the opposite: a narrow but genuine range of regional craft. It sells Rif blankets, djellabas, baskets and blue pigment, sometimes from weavers working looms in their shopfronts, and the haggling is gentle. The choice repeats after a few lanes.

Chefchaouen costs far less. Guesthouses, tagines in the square and shared taxis to the valleys are all cheap, and even the better riads stay modest. Marbella is expensive by Spanish standards, particularly in July and August and around the Golden Mile. Old-town tapas, off-season apartments and staying in a neighbouring town all bring costs down.

Neither town is a destination for performance, but Marbella has at least a summer season. Big pop and rock acts play an outdoor festival in an old quarry, there are concerts in beach clubs, and flamenco shows are staged for visitors. In Chefchaouen you will hear the odd Andalusian music performance at festival time, and otherwise the call to prayer over the rooftops.

Both are restful places, but the rest is of different kinds. Chefchaouen offers slowness: roof-terrace tea, cool mountain air and a cheap, no-frills scrub in a neighbourhood hammam, with polished spa treatments available only in a handful of riads.

Marbella offers comfort. Spa resorts, yoga retreats and detox clinics line the Golden Mile, and there are a few Arab-style baths. It is at its most restorative between October and May, when the summer crowds and parties have gone.